Saturday, April 19, 2014

I'm doing a music post. Carly Simon's a mini-theme for Friday & Saturday posts so I'm grabbing her as a topic.

I assume everyone already knows Carly.

She's a singer-songwriter who first hit the charts with "That's The Way I've Always Heard It Should Be." Other big hits include "Anticipation," "Coming Around Again," "Let The River Run," "Jesse," "Better Not Tell Her," "All I Want Is You," "Nobody Does It Better," "The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of," "Attitude Dancing," "Legend In Your Own Time," "Gimmie' All Night," "Love Of My Life," "Mockingbird," "The Right Thing To Do," "Devoted To You," "You Belong To Me," and "Haven't Got Time For The Pain."

She's a great artist.

That's Have You Seen Me Lately? which is possibly my all time favorite of all her albums.

The hits on this one were "Better Not Tell Her" and "Holding Me Tonight."

I think I like "Holding Me Tonight" the best of the two and mainly because of how she sings the chorus with all this air in her breath. It's not really a whisper but it's close to it. "Didn't I?" has that even more so.

The album is filled with a lot of riches.

I love "Fisherman's Song" (which has backing vocals from Judy Collins). I love "It's Not Like Him." I love "Life Is Eternal."

But my all time favorite song on the album is "We Just Got Here" which I love from the strum intro to the final notes.

This is just a beautiful song. Here's some of the lyrics:

There are a few more freckles on your shoulders
The hammock swings lower and touches the ground
The apples are ripe and the corn is past
Everyone says summer goes by so fast
And we just got here
I can hardly believe it but it's ended
The beach is a haze and old love's a ghost
Hugo is twisting his way up the coast
If you blew out to sea I'd love you most
And we just got here
Nostalgia you fake, you bitter sweet ache
The time that you take could make another heart whole
Could the truth be I won't really see
How much I love you
'Til it's over

Is that not just amazing? Is Carly not just one of the most talented lyricists?

The song has an incredible melody. And the music kind of swings like the hammock she sings about. It's just a really beautiful song.

Friday, April 18, 2014. Chaos and violence continue, Nouri's War Crimes
continue (and are called out by a Sheikh), Tehran officials are told a
third term for Nouri is unacceptable, Robert Beecroft is also informed
of that, election campaigning heats up, KRB gets some bad news, Nouri's
baby thug gets some media attention, and much more.

We're not campaign central. We will look at Hillary Clinton's run in
terms of Iraq. The former Secretary of State, Senator and First Lady is
a press favorite for a 2016 presidential run. She herself hasn't made
up her mind yet and protests and thrown shoes may be indicating a level
of hostility to her again running for the Democratic Party's
presidential nomination. I've already stated I have no intention of
voting for her, I'm not campaigning for her. But let's look at her
record. Ann McFeatters (Gulf Today) explores it and offers:Hillary says she still has to figure out why she’d run. She has said
nothing yet about what a Hillary Clinton presidency would mean for the
country. Being first woman president would be cool but probably isn’t
reason enough to elect her.She ran in 2008 defending the war in
Iraq, a war that just about everyone except Donald Rumsfeld and Dick
Cheney agrees was a bad mistake. There’s a general consensus that
capturing Saddam Hussein was not worth thousands of lives and hundreds
of billions of dollars.

That's the real surprise that no one wants to talk about. She ran in
2008, she failed to stake out ground on Iraq that would carry her to the
nomination. Even if you believe the nomination was stolen from her (I
do believe that, that's part of the reason Nancy Pelosi stopped the
floor vote -- it would have revealed how close Hillary and Barack were
in delegates). But she was part of a divisive primary season.

How does that go away now? Or are people at various left websites now
confessing that their endless smears of Hillary as racist or wanting
Barack Obama dead were lies -- lies they knew they were telling in real
time?

The reality is, it was a bitter primary. How do you, eight years later, pretend that didn't happen?

I have no idea but I have no idea why Hillary couldn't get over her
pride and admit her Iraq War vote was wrong. It was a 2008 mistake and
it's six years after that run and she's still associated with the Iraq
War. The only thing to her credit as a senator was opposing the surge
but, as we now know from former US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and
his Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War,
Hillary only opposed it for political reasons/posturing. (The same is
true of Barack, read Gates' book, but we're not talking about Barack
running in 2016.) (The 'surge' was when Bully Boy Bush sent more US
troops into Iraq in 2007 to secure the country -- primarily Baghdad --
to allow Nouri to work on the White House benchmarks that he promised to
implement but never, ever did. Excuses were made in 2007 and outlets
rushed to give him partial grades and pretend that in 2008 he'd achieve
-- he didn't 2008, he didn't since. It was more broken promises from
Nouri.)

While Hillary attempts to figure out whether or not to run and what her big achievement as Secretary of State was, Roger Aranoff (Western Journalism) notes Hillary travels with a bit more than carry-on luggage:

But
the legacy of Hillary Clinton is turning out to be one of incompetence,
bungled efforts, chicanery, and outright scandal. Her most famous words
have become, “What difference at this point does it make?” referring to
how the four brave Americans died in Benghazi in September of 2012. And
a number of other scandals have followed her, both from before and during her tenure as Secretary of State. The latest is about $6 billion in contract dollars that the State Department lost track of over the last six years.According to the Inspector General report:

There was a lack of paperwork: of 115 contracts sampled from the U.S. Mission in Iraq, 33 could not be produced.

There was missing documentation: the Bureau of African Affairs couldn’t provide complete files for any of the eight contracts requested.

There were conflicts of interest: a $52 million contract was
awarded to a “company owned by the spouse of a contractor employee
performing as a Contract Specialist for the contract.”

Payments were sent when they weren’t supposed to be: $792,782 was
sent to a contractor, “even though the contract file did not contain
documents to support the payment.”

Contracts were even hidden: “The related contract file was
not properly maintained and for a period of time was hidden…This
contract was valued at $100 million.”

All in all, this creates “conditions conducive to fraud, as corrupt
individuals may attempt to conceal evidence of illicit behavior by
omitting key documents from the contract file,” according to the IG
report.

In 12 days, parliamentary elections are supposed to take place in Iraq.

Where's the State Dept?

They would say they are working (feedback they're receiving from the
public says otherwise). Whatever they're doing, they're not
communicating with their ultimate boss: the US public.

Iraq last held parliamentary elections in 2010, when Hillary Clinton was
Secretary of State. February 17, 2010, then-US Ambassador to Iraq Chris
Hill delivered "Briefing On Upcoming Iraqi Elections and U.S.-Iraqi Relations"
-- a bad briefing, Hill's an idiot, but it was a briefing. It took
place in DC. It took place 18 days before the elections. This go
round, nothing from the State Dept and yet the elections are only 12
days away.

Maybe if John Kerry stopped bullying other countries, the State Dept would have addressed the elections by now?

And the day of the election and after the elections, Hillary issued
multiple statements so someone better inform John Kerry that he needs to
up his game because with regards to keeping Americans informed on key
points with regards to the State Dept's mission in Iraq, Hillary did a
better job than Kerry's doing.

“On the surface, the speed with which Iraq’s new political order has
fallen apart is a puzzle. Although bombings never stopped, there had
been relative stability since the spring of 2008, when Maliki,
emboldened by the successful U.S.-backed Sunni revolt against al Qaeda,
known as the Awakening, set out to disband the Shiite militias
endangering law and order in Basra and Baghdad,” argues Ned Parker in the New York Review of Books.“The campaign, supported by the Americans, produced a surge of
patriotism among both Shiites and Sunnis. By 2010, when the country was
preparing to stage its second national elections for a four-year
government, Iraq seemed poised to cast off its divisions. Maliki,
running for reelection, had learned to present himself as both staunchly
Shiite and a leader for all Iraqis. Resisting pressure from other
Shiite religious parties and Iran, he ran his own list of candidates,
including Sunni tribesmen and secular politicians…Yet Maliki and his
Shiite Islamist supporters were unable to shed their deep mistrust of
those they believed had fought them in the past. Rather than being
integrated into the political system, several dozen leaders of the
Awakening ended up dead or in jail, or forced into exile.”

She's also wrong in the following, "But fighting still rages and it's
been announced that national elections
planned to the end of the month will not happen in Anbar. Alice
Fordham, NPR News." She got her name right. You can dispute the "NPR
News" label -- NPR doesn't really do much news anymore, it's all feature
stories. But she's wrong about an announcement regarding Anbar.

How did that make it on air?

Well, like I said, NPR really doesn't do news anymore so there's no one to fact check.

April 8th, the IHEC declared not all areas of Anbar would have polling stations. Today Tasnim News Agency reports:“In Anbar Province, all necessary arrangements have been made to ensure
the security of the election, which is to be held on April 30,” Faleh
Al-Eisawi, the head of the council of the province said in an interview
with the Tasnim News Agency.[. . .]He also emphasized that the police forces in cooperation with Anbar
Operations Command are to implement an extensive security plan to
provide the security of the elections.

Again, Alice Fordham's claim (""But fighting still rages and it's been
announced that national elections planned to the end of the month will
not happen in Anbar.") does not hold up.

Iraq last held
parliamentary elections in March of 2010. In those elections, Nouri al-Maliki's
State of Law lost to Ayad Allawi's Iraqiya. Though Allawi should have
been named prime minister-designate, loser Nouri threw an eight month
long tantrum and the White House indulged him. They did more than that,
they also worked to find a way to let the loser have a second term as
prime minister. Since he lost the vote, they went to the leaders of the
political blocs and pointed out Nouri could hold out for 8 more months
(Parliament wasn't able to meet during Nouri's tantrum, he brought
government to a standstill) and got them to sign a contract (The Erbil
Agreement) which Nouri used to grab a second term.

As Anthony H. Cordesman and Sam Khazai pointed out earlier this year in [PDF format warning] "Iraq in Crisis:"US officials applauded the 2010 Erbil agreement, and said they were hopeful that such cooperative
arrangement would provide a political breakthrough among Iraq’s leadership, and allow them to
address the country’s problems. They pointed to the influence the US had in pushing for the
outcome, including the adoption of an American suggestion that Allawi head a new, “National
Council for Security Policy”.

Vice
President Biden made numerous calls to senior Iraqi leaders over the
past several months and U.S. officials directly participated in
top-level negotiating sessions that lasted until just moments before
the Iraqi parliament finally convened to approve a new power-sharing
government Thursday, a senior Obama administration official said
Friday.

The contract didn't just have the leaders say, "Second term for Nouri!"
In exchange for that second term, the contract outlined actions Nouri
would have to take. But then he refused to honor his promises. It's among the
reasons he's so loathed today.

We've note many press whores over the years. When there's a member of
the press that tells the truth, we also try to note that. On The Erbil
Agreement, we're going to drop back to November 13, 2010 when one
reporter had the guts to tell the truth. Michael Jansen (Gulf Today) stated the obvious, "The deal making that produced last Thursday’s session of
parliament is nothing to boast about." She then continued:

It
is not clear why Iraqiya thought Maliki -- a sectarian Shiite whose
Dawa party was a bitter enemy of the Baath -- would implement this
pledge. Maliki has also failed to carry out solemn promises to recruit
into the security forces or find civil service jobs for fighters of the
Sunni Awakening Councils -- or Sons of Iraq movement -- who helped US
and government forces curb Al Qaeda in 2007-08. Maliki has shown himself
to have absolutely no intention of sharing power with Sunnis and
certainly not with secular politicians like Allawi who represents the
"old Iraq" where politics was non-sectarian. In
spite of Obama's declaration that an "inclusive" government formula had
been found after months of wrangling, Maliki is not interested in
including Sunnis, secularists, former Baathists and others who do not
subscribe to the ethno-sectarian system imposed on Iraq by the previous
Bush administration.

She said that days after The Erbil Agreement was signed. She had been
proven correct by the events that followed. Credit to Michael Jansen
for offering reality and perspective when few others were able or
willing to. Salah Nasrawi (Al-Ahram Weekly) reports:

With the vote only days away, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki’s
prospects for re-election look dim, and the country’s Shia parties,
which together are poised to win the most seats in parliament, have
started looking for a challenger to the incumbent leader.Al-Maliki, who is seeking a third term in office, is in trouble as Iraq
is teeming with problems. Many blame him for the country’s sectarian
violence, political turmoil and economic deadlock and are eager to see a
new prime minister in place.For the time being, there is no frontrunner in Iraq’s elections,
scheduled for 30 April, as several Shia politicians have been vying for
the powerful position which also includes the key post of
commander-in-chief of the armed forces.

Iraq Times reports
the Independent High Electoral Commission announced Thursday that they
have fined 61 political bodies and candidates so far for campaign
violations. The IHEC is a ruling body but the Iraqi people are the
ultimate ruling body (unless the White House steps in as it did in 2006
when it installed Nouri al-Maliki as prime minister and as it did in
2010 when it demanded he be given a second term). And the people are
defining their own issues right now. For example, Rekar Aziz and Alexander Whitcomb (Rudaw) report
that, in the Kurdistan Region, where campaign posters, leaflets and
other printed materials are made is becoming an issue with voters and
local businesses since much of the campaign material is coming "from
Turkey, Lebanon and as far away as China" harming the KRG's local
economy.

Let's stay with the Kurds for a moment, Ilnur Cevik (Daily Sabah) reports:Iraqi Kurdish leaders feel that if the current impasse in relations
with
the Iraqi central government continues after the April 30 elections
they will have no other option but to gradually weaken their ties with
Baghdad and eventually declare a separate state. Kurdish Regional
Government (KRG) Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani was in Ankara to meet
with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Wednesday night to feel the
pulse of Ankara if the Kurds eventually move away from Baghdad. A source
close to Barzani told Daily Sabah on Thursday that Barzani returned
home late Wednesday night "satisfied."The central government of Iraq led by Nouri el-Maliki has been at odds
with the Kurds over an array of issues stemming from an oil and gas
dispute. Baghdad has thus been slow in sending the KRG's share of Iraqi
oil revenues and therefore pushed the Kurds into a financial bottleneck
with serious delays in even the payment of civil servant salaries in the
KRG.

And Nouri continues to alienate the Kurds. Adnan Jassem (Anadolu Agency) notes, "Iraq's main Shiite bloc led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will
endorse a 'moderate Sunni Arab' candidate to succeed incumbent President
Jalal Talabani, who is Kurdish, a leading bloc member has said."

Ahrar bloc of Sadr Trend described granting a 3rd term for the Premier, Nouri al-Maliki, as "Dreams."MP, Hussien al-Shireifi, of Ahrar bloc stated to AIN "The majority of the political blocs object renewing a 3rd term for Maliki due to his policies that caused crises and problems for the country."

In addition, Iraq Times quotes another Sadr bloc MP, Bahaa al-Araji stating that Nouri will not receive a third term as prime minister. In another report, the outlet quotes
al-Araji stating Nouri has no achievements to speak of, not when
security has deteriorated and the economy is not improved and . . . Dar Addustour reports
that both cleric and movement leader Moqtada al-Sadr and Islamic
Supreme Council of Iraq's Ammar al-Hakim went to Tehran to make clear
that a third term for Nouri is unacceptable and that this follows KRG
President Massoud Barzani told officials in Tehran that a third term for
Nouri would cause the Kurds to secede. As Ann noted last night, Ayad Allawi declared this week that Nouri shouldn't have a third term as prime minister. Iraq Times reports
the State Dept's Brett McGurk is advocating for a third term for Nouri
and that Ahmed Chalabi is speaking with the White House about why this
is not a good idea and spoke to US Ambassador to Iraq Robert Beecroft
about this on Monday.

Not all Iraqis who vote will be voting in Iraq. There are many Iraqis who have had to flee the country due to violence. NINA reports, "A leading member of Rafidain parliamentary bloc MP, Imad Youkhana
called on Iraqi communities abroad to broad participation in the
upcoming parliamentary elections." All Iraq News reports:

The member of the Parliamentary Foreign Relations Committee, Imad
Yokhana, called the Iraqis abroad for wide participation in the upcoming
parliamentary elections.He stated to AIN "The Iraqis
abroad can determine the future of Iraq for the next 4 years via their
participation in the elections."

Two days before the election, Iraq's security forces will take part in early voting. Mustafa Habib (Niqash) explores the military vote and we'll note this section:

It is also possible that the situation they are facing in Anbar may be turning the Iraqi military against al-Maliki. When problems
first started in Anbar, al-Maliki seemed to be very popular with the
military, observers say. However over recent months this has changed.

“Al-Maliki’s popularity is decreasing,” says one senior
member of the military in Basra province, who did not want to be named
for fear of repercussions. “Because the army is having huge difficulties
in Anbar.”

According to this soldier, the Iraqi government has
allegedly played down the number of military casualties it’s had in the
fight against insurgents in Anbar. Videos being posted on YouTube and
other social media indicate many more are being captured and killed.

“Previously regiments in the south of the country were
fairly safe on their bases,” the military source says. “Then al-Maliki
decided to bring them to Anbar and it’s led to many deaths. This has
increased ill will towards the government.”

“The government has forced the Iraqi military into a
battle it cannot win,” says Yassin al-Rubaie, a former member of the
Iraqi army’s Seventh Division, which is currently deployed in Anbar. “We
don’t have any experience fighting a guerrilla war on the streets and
we don’t know the area at all. The militias fighting us know the area
very well, they’re better coordinated than the army and they have had
this kind of combat experience before,” he says.

Nouri al-Maliki continues killing civilians in Anbar. Alsumaria reports a military shelling of a residential neighborhood in Ramadi left 3 people dead "including a child." Iraqi Spring MC notes Nouri's three murders here. Iraqi Spring MC also notes
people demonstrated in Ramadi calling on Nouri to pulls his forces out
of the city and the military 'responded' by firing randomly. Meanwhile
Nouri's forces continued their bombing of Falluja's residential
neighborhoods. Alsumaria reports 1 civilian was killed and ten more were injured in the latest assault from Nouri's military. Suleiman al-Qubeisi (Anadolu Agency) also reports on the Falluja assault. NINA quotes Sheikh Mohammed Fayyad stating, "Friday sermons in Fallujah focused on demands to stop the
indiscriminate shelling of the city if the government rely want to
develop a solution to the crisis , the abolition of the provincial
government and members of the board because of their frustrated stands
as they escaped to the northern provinces or out of Iraq and stealing by
some of them aid, food and funds allocated by many local and
international agencies for the displaced people of Anbar moreover of
exploited the stolen funds and material to serve them in the propaganda
of electoral campaign." Kitabat notes the Sheikh called out the "genocide" taking place as Nouri attacks the civilians of Falluja and Ramadi.

For the last few weeks, Nouri's been moving prisoners out of Abu Ghraib prison. Iraq Times noted
Tuesday that Baghdad Operations Command has repeatedly denied this was
happening although the Ministry of Justice confirmed it on Tuesday when
the prison was shut down. From Tuesday's snapshot:

World Bulletin notes that "the prison was also used as a torture facility by Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime." AFP adds, "In 2004, then under control by U.S. troops, Abu Ghraib was at the center of a scandal over detainee abuse." AP also offers a brief sentence about the Abu Ghraib War Crimes, "Under U.S. troops, Abu Ghraib was at the center of a 2004 scandal over detainee abuse." The Saudi Gazette elaborates:From late 2003 to early 2004, during the Iraq War, military police
personnel of the United States Army and the Central Intelligence Agency
committed human rights violations against prisoners held in the Abu
Ghraib prison. They physically and sexually abused, tortured, raped,
sodomized, and killed prisoners. It came to public attention in early
2004, beginning with United States Department of Defense announcements.
As revealed in the Taguba Report (2004), an initial criminal
investigation by the United States Army Criminal Investigation Command
had already been underway, in which soldiers of the 320th Military
Police Battalion had been charged under the Uniform Code of Military
Justice with prisoner abuse. In April 2004, articles describing the abuse, including pictures showing
military personnel appearing to abuse prisoners, came to wide public
attention when a 60 Minutes II news report (April 28) and an
article by Seymour M. Hersh in The New Yorker magazine (posted online
on April 30 and published days later in the May 10 issue) reported the
story. The
United States Department of Defense removed seventeen soldiers and
officers from duty, and eleven soldiers were charged with dereliction of
duty, maltreatment, aggravated assault and battery.

This morning, only France24 could note, "Fresh abuse claims surfaced in 2013 after the facility became known as Baghdad Central Prison." Ed Adamczyk (UPI) later noted the continuous history of abuse, "The prison has a long history of abuse, under Saddam Hussein, during
the occupation of Iraq by U.S. troops, and, human rights advocates say,
under the present leadership. Critics accuse Prime Minister Nuri Kamal
al-Maliki with filling prisons, including Abu Ghraib, with young Sunni
men -- many, advocates claim, are innocent of insurgency."

Today, on Morning Edition (NPR -- link is text and audio), Kelly McEvers discussed the closure with Reuter's Baghdad bureau chief Ned Parker. Excerpt.MCEVERS: First, we know what American jailers did to Iraqi prisoners
at Abu Ghraib. But give us an update - what kind of place was Abu Ghraib
after American troops withdrew from Iraq in 2011?PARKER: For
Sunni Iraqis, Abu Ghraib prison was a symbol of the Shiite-led
government's discriminatory policies. They believed many of their
relatives were being held unjustly inside Abu Ghraib Prison after being
held and sometimes tried - other times not - on terrorism charges in
cases where they felt abuses were committed by the security forces.

So
under the Americans Abu Ghraib was nefarious. Before that under Saddam
it was nefarious and after the Americans it also remained sinister.

Some day, Nouri's son may be sitting in an Iraqi prison, behind bars. Dropping back to November 1, 2013:

Live Leak posted that video of the new Little Uday Hussein, Nouri's son
Ahmed, zipping around London and the Ferrari. They note:

In this short video, Ahmed, the gangster son of one of the
world's most corrupt leaders Nuri Al-Maliki, drives his Ferrari around
central London, while he was on a �200 million property spending spree
with Iraq's money. Ahmed was of course cleared of all charges in
a huge corruption case involving Iraqi Government procurement of
Russian arms in 2012. Nuri Al-Maliki is known to own numerous
several properties and a hotel in the UK, and has long been rumoured to
be planning to live here when his time as the chief bribe taker in Iraq
is over. He also owns the Seyedeh Zainab Ambassador hotel in Damascus.London
is the natural home of blood soaked African warlords, Russian
gangsters/Oligarchs, and of corrupt Middle Eastern despots, and their
offspring.Iraqi puppet leader Nuri Al-Maliki's gangster son Ahmed is spending the Iraqi people's money very wiselyIraqi puppet leader Nuri Al-Maliki's gangster son Ahmed is spending the Iraqi people's money very wiselyIraqi puppet leader Nuri Al-Maliki's gangster son Ahmed is spending the Iraqi people's money very wiselyIraq,Corruption,Bribery,,London,London,C­ity of,United Kingdom (UK/GB)

[. . .]
Here's a picture of mini-tyrant Ahmed al-Maliki.

As you can see, he gets his ugly from his father. Here he is trying to look cleaned up.

Iraq’s Kurdistan Democratic Party’s official newspaper, Khebat,
revealed that Nouri Maliki’s son has expensed over $150 million of the
Iraqi people’s assets purchasing castles and hotels in foreign
countries. The newspaper wrote quoting a source: After his father became
Chairman of the Dawa Party, Ahmed Nouri al-Maliki purchased the Marry
Anderson Castle in London for a price of £40 million. In addition, he
purchased the Seyedeh Zainab Ambassador Hotel in Damascus at a price of
$35 million, and is now purchasing the Ajmon Ambassador Hotel at a price
of $75 million. The source added that Ahmed Nouri
al-Maliki has purchased an 85 thousand square meter land in front of the
Zainab Hotel for $52 million. Iraq’s Kurdistan
Democratic Party’s official newspaper, Khebat, added: Iraqis who live
with power outages and no public services, and while a day doesn’t go by
that a number of people don’t lose their lives as a result of
explosions, ask the Maliki government: Where does Maliki’s son bring all
this money from?

Today, in "Is Maliki's son the new Uday?," Paul Crompton and Hind Mustafa explore Ahmed al-Maliki:Ahmed’s role as security chief enables him to control exactly who goes
in and out of the Green Zone, by controlling the issuing of security
badges needed to access the area.However, his activities in the Green Zone are a sideshow compared to
Ahmed’s wider business interests in the county, said a former high-level
official, who knew Ahmed personally and had worked with Nouri Al-Maliki
for eight years.“Two years ahead, he will lead the corruption not only in the [prime
minister’s office],” but in the military, the security, construction and
investment, as well as the investment commission.”“Hamoudi” is also involved in military activities, including heading up a
new force operating directly under the premier’s orders — separate from
the command of the army or defense minister, the source said.

This is it at its most basic. Everyone who can speak on a campus
should. Campuses should be a forum for free expression. Because I
speak on a campus doesn't mean everyone's required to attend. If they
oppose me, they're more than welcome to protest. One of the scariest
protests would be my arriving to find no one (or just a tiny handful) of
people in the room waiting to hear me.To put this in terms of Condi Rice. She has every right to speak on any
campus. And people have every right to attend or not to attend. They
have every right to protest. They even have the right to heckle.
That's free speech.

The University of Minnesota is an institution that values and utilizes
free speech. They proved it by allowing Condi Rice to speak. They
proved it by allowing those who take offense at the War Hawk to protest.
And students made their case and made it strongly. Chris Getowicz (Fight Back News) reports:

Hundreds of students and community members gathered outside of
Northrop Auditorium at the University of Minnesota (U of M), on the
evening of April 17, to protest an appearance by Bush White House
National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. Rice was speaking as an
invited guest of the University’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs.The crowd of over 250 protesters, led by Students for a Democratic
Society (SDS), heard speakers including professors David Pellow and
August Nimtz, AFSCME 3800 President Cherenne Horazuk, Welfare Rights
Committee member Deb Howze, Anti-War Committee member Sabri Wazwaz and
representatives from other student groups such as Whose Diversity and
Students for Justice in Palestine.Speakers condemned Rice as a war criminal whose misconduct during the
Bush administration included direct responsibility for the use of
‘enhanced interrogation techniques.’ This torture was systematically
implemented by the CIA and used at Black Sites around the world as well
as prisons like Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.

In an interview with Britain'sThe Telegraph,
the 60-year-old actor revealed he has "no desire" to watch himself as
James Bond, saying his performance was "never good enough."

I'm sorry that he feels that way.

He's not my favorite Bond. I think my favorite is Sean Connery but Daniel Craig is close to overtaking him.

I like Timothy Dalton and Roger Moore and Brosnan -- even the one-time Bond from On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

But even though Brosnan's not my favorite, I think he made some good Bond movies and would rank Die Another Day and The World Is Not Enough as great Bond films. (And I love all four of the films he did.)

I don't know if he's someone who just grades himself harshly or if he really thinks he was awful.

The reality is, he was very good.

If he hadn't come along and succeeded in becoming Bond, the franchise would have died.

No one can argue that his Bond brought excitement back.

And he'll probably be ranked higher as the years go by.

I love Daniel Craig but Quantum of Solace was not a good Bond movie.

I liked it at the time. I watch it even now. But it's plot is too all over the place.

All the Bonds Brosnan starred in hold up as films.

(Sean Connery's Diamonds Are Forever really doesn't hold up either, sorry. I watch it often -- just last weekend, I watched it again -- and I enjoy it as a Bond freak but it's not one of the better Connery films.)

Thursday, April 17, 2014. Chaos and violence continue, Nouri's War
Crimes continue, Iraq preps for parliamentary elections, the Ja'fari
bill gets attention on KPFA, in the US an Iraqi man is convicted of
killing his wife, and much more.

Starting in the US where there's been a conviction. City News Service reports
the El Cajon murder trial reached a verdict today with the jury
"finding Kassim Alhimidi, 49, guilty of first-degree murder in the death
of 32-year-old Shaima Alawadi, a mother of five." As we noted April 1st,
Shaima's murder was briefly important to gas bags in March 2012 when
they thought she was murdered by someone who hated her because she was
Muslim or because she was Iraqi or both. When it turned out it was her
husband? They ran from her and never looked back. Uprising Radio, US
Socialist Worker, Democracy Now . . . all of them cared when it was a
'hate crime' by a stranger. When Shaima's murder became another in a
long line of women killed by 'loved ones' in the US, they didn't have
any interest.

Shahram Aghamir: Last month the Iraqi Cabinet approved a new personal
status legislation called the Ja'fari law which is named after the
sixth Shi'ite Imam, Ja'far al-Sadiq who established a school of
jurisprudence in Medina in the 8th century. This legislation has
created an uproar among Iraqi women's rights and the civil rights
community. If approved, the Ja'fari law will abolish the current
Personal Status Law 188 which is considered one of the most progressive
in the Arab world. The new law will roll back the rights of women in
marriage, divorce and child custody as well as inheritance. It will
lower the age of marriage for girls from 18 to 9 and boys to 15. Who
has initially proposed the law and what are the implications of this law
for Iraqi women? Malihe spoke with Iraqi women's rights activist Basma
al-Khateeb who volunteers with Iraq's 1st Convention on the Elimination
of Discrimination Against Women Shadow Report Coalition as an expert
and a trainer.Basma al-Khateeb: Actually, the Minister of Justice by the end of
October declared that they have a committee -- expert committee -- and
they have finished drafting the Ja'fari law. It consists of 256
articles and he's going to present it to the Cabinet by the next
session. He says that they've been working on for the past two years.Malihe Razazan: Back in 2004, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim who died in 2009,
he was in exile in Iran for 20 years before the invasion, and after the
occupation of Iraq, he worked very closely with the Americans. His
party worked to pass Decision 137 issue by interim governing council to
abolish the Personal Status Law Number 188 which was passed in 1959 --Basma al-Kahteeb: That was actually the first thing that he -- that
he issued, this Resolution 137 -- as if Iraq had no problems. This was
the only rule that he came up with. And we had demonstrations and we
managed to defeat that. They withdrew it.Malihe Razazan: Yeah, because there was a huge backlash against it.Basma al-Khateeb: But this is historical. His father, Muhsin
al-Hakim, back in 1959, when the civil Personal Status Law was issued,
the religious institutes led by Muhsin al-Hakim back then, his father,
refused this Personal Status Law because it will take all the authority
from the cleric.Malihe Razazan: In matters regarding women's divorce, child custody, inheritance it will be left to civil courts.Basma al-Khateeb: Yes. And this is how our judicial system and
lawyers and colleges and scholars all -- I mean, we're talking about
sixty years that all our institutions -- judicial, court, everything --
is built on it. This -- going back just to abolish all of this -- this
law --the formal law, the Personal Status Law that's still active now.
It doesn't go to clerics, only the judge rules. This current law puts
another council that is in control of judges of courts. It just turns
everything into chaos. Every lawyer has to study all these religious
and cleric institution and legal issues. It doesn't mean that we have
one court. It means that we have more than 20 courts because each
Ayatollah is different in examination with the other. Havilah? Even
though they're Sh'itie, they're different from the Sadr group, they're
different from Sistani interpretation which means multi courts.

Proponents of the Ja'afari Law say many families marry off
daughters underage anyway, particularly in the rural south, so the bill
would protect young brides by codifying their status."The law does not make the marriage of underage girls
obligatory," said Shi'ite women's rights activist Thabat al-Unaibi,
adding she would not let her own two daughters marry until they were old
enough to have finished their studies."Why all the fuss over this issue?"

Haider Ala Hamoudi, a law professor at the University of Pittsburg
who advised the 2009 Constitutional Review Committee of the Iraqi
legislature on behalf of the United States Embassy in Baghdad, has
analyzed the text.In a phone interview he called it sloppily drafted and poorly organized. "I just dismiss it as publicity to garner votes."

In a March 31article in the Jurist, Hamoudi
lays out the obstacles to transforming religious texts into actual laws
and calls the text something of a "political stunt." In the article he
quotes Ayatollah al- Bashir Najif, a leading Shiite, as criticizing the
bill as "rife with flights of fancy in legal and juristic formulations
that render it impossible that a jurist would find it acceptable."

Really? We're going to predict what's going to happen in an election when anything can happen?

And if it's being used "to garner votes," might some push hard for it to pass the Parliament after the election?

I have no idea what's going to happen with the bill.

But it does have supporters and it is being sold. It's being normalized.

And this is happening not just with the bill and the attempt to kill off
the Personal Status Law Number 188. This is part of a larger war.
Dropping back to January 27, 2012 snapshot:We bring that up because Nouri did finally find a woman and named her to
be Minister of the State for Women's Affairs. The woman is Dr. Ibtihal
al-Zaidi. And Al Mada reports
the lovely doesn't believe in equality stating equality "harms women"
but she's happy to offer government dictates on what women should be
wearing. No, she's not a minister. She's many things including words we
won't use here but she's not friend to women and that's why Nouri
picked her. A real woman fighting for other women? Nouri can't handle
that. A simpering idiot who states that women should only act after
their husband's consent? That gender traitor gets a ministry. She's
currently at work devising a uniform for Iraqi women.

Let's to back to Wednesday's broadcast of Voices of the Middle East and North Africa.

Basma al-Khateeb: It lowers the marriage age for girls to 9 -- Malihe Razazan: From 18.Basma al-Khateeb: -- 15 for boys, it's 18 for both [currently]
marriage. Only in very, very special cases it's 15 with the consent of
the judge under the current law. But for this Ja'fari law it lowers
the age to 9. And wives must seek permission from their husbands before
leaving the house. If I am a doctor or a minister or a lawyer, I
cannot go out without permission from my husband, go out of the house.
Muslim men would be prohibited from marrying non-Muslim women.
Granting husbands legal rights to have sex with their wives without
their consent. Granting custody to the father of any child over
two-years-old in the case of divorce which is not the case that we have
now with the current law.

Note the similarities between the law and the position, two years ago, of the Minister of Women's Affairs.

Nouri picked that idiot for a reason.

This is not happening by accident.

Bit by bit, this gets pushed over and over. And every time it does the
appropriate response is world wide condemnation. Short of that? It's
not just being normalized within Iraq, it's being normalized outside of
Iraq via silence.

Girls below the age of nine can be married with the consent of their

"But it's still a danger because it's there, the draft is there."
also them they're still lobbying to pass it

As Mark Taliano (Troy Media) observes,
"'Freedom' and 'democracy' are still cloaking, tacitly or overtly, mass
murder and genocide in Iraq at this moment." And that's certainly
clear as Nouri terrorizes the citizens of Anbar. His War Crimes are
many but include the non-stop bombing of residential neighborhoods in
Falluja. Yesterday's snapshot noted how common these bombings were. The military's bombing of the residential neighborhoods continues. NINA reports, "A source at the Fallujah General Hospital told the reporter of the
National Iraqi News Agency / NINA / five people, including a woman, were
killed and 11 others wounded, including two children, in the renewed
shelling and mortar to most of Fallujah today." Qatar News Agency covers the killing of civilians here.

This is a War Crime. Nouri's committing War Crimes with weapons the US
government provides him with.

Good
afternoon, Gwen. I'm bothered by the attack on Anbar Province in Iraq
and the lack of western media coverage. Specifically, Nouri al-Maliki
has been bombing the residential neighborhoods of Falluja every day
since the start of the year. This is collective punishment and it is
leaving many dead -- including many children. But we see nothing on the
news about this in the US. Since we are the ones arming Maliki, this
seems like a serious news issue in need of coverage to me. What does it
take to get Iraq covered on The Newshour? Thank you.

12:34

Gwen Ifill:

I have to say, if you're going to see coverage of the ongoing situation in Iraq anywhere, it will be on the NewsHour.

So Ann raises specific issues and gets an 'answer' where Gwen basically says, 'Watch The NewsHour!'

In addition, Xinhua reports:Also in Salahudin province, gunmen blew up a crude
oil pipeline in al-Fatha area in east of the city of Baiji, some 200 km
north of Baghdad, causing large quantity of oil spill into the nearby
Tigris River, a provincial police source said.The pipeline carries crude oil produced from Ajil Oilfield in east of
the provincial capital city of Tikrit, some 170 km north of Baghdad, to
the refinery in Baiji. A huge fire occurred at the scene, while the oil
leak caused pollution in Tigris river that forces many water facilities
to stop working in the cities to the south of the leak, the source
added.

Elections are supposed to take place April 30th, parliamentary elections. Al-Shorfa reports,
"Iraq's Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) on Thursday (April
17th) said it has doubled the number of international observers who
will monitor the next parliamentary elections." Kirk Sowell (Gulf News) notes

The other key Al Maliki rival are the Sadrists, most of whom are
running under the name Ahrar Bloc (Freemen Bloc). Ahrar recently voted
in a new governing board following Muqtada Al Sadr’s announcement that
he was withdrawing from politics. It remains unclear as to what impact
Sadr’s withdrawal will have.

There are several third-tier coalitions which should get a handful of
seats; some of them are entirely Shiite while others are
cross-sectarian. They are about evenly divided between factions which
are pro and anti-Al Maliki, and should only have an impact if Al
Maliki’s margin of victory is relatively narrow.

The primary Sunni Arab bloc is Speaker Nujaifi’s Mutahidun. It contains
a majority of the Sunni factions in the 2010 opposition Iraqiya
coalition nominally headed by former interim Prime Minister Eyad Allawi,
plus the largest Sunni Turkoman group, the Iraqi Turkoman FrontIts
political programme mainly consists of decentralisation, potentially
forming new autonomous regions, and the defence of Sunni identity in the
face of the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad.

While Mutahidun’s public rhetoric is focused on pillorying the Al
Maliki government, Nujaifi is informally allied with the main Kurdish
party, the Kurdistani Democratic Party (KDP), due to his
pro-decentralisation stance, ties to Turkey and the need for Kurds, who
are predominately Sunni, to balance the Shiites.

Sowell also points out that there are 142 political parties competing
and twelve of those are part of Nouri's State of Law coalition (which
lost in 2010 to Ayad Allawi's Iraqiya. Harith Hasan (Al-Monitor) notes Iraqiya has fragmented since 2010:

Five main coalitions will compete to win Sunni votes, but we cannot
rule out surprise results that might be achieved by small or local
parties. Three of these five coalitions, in fact, represent fragments of
the Iraqiya List, which is no longer present in the elections. The Mutahidoun bloc, led by parliament Speaker Osama al-Nujaifi,
is the first of these coalitions. It consists of 13 parties and is
seeking to appear as the biggest Sunni force after the elections. The
second coalition is the Arabiya led by Deputy Prime Minister Saleh
al-Mutlaq, and includes nine parties. Third, there is the Nationalist Coalition, led by Ayad Allawi, the former prime minister who was the leader of the Iraqiya List.The Nationalist is one of the rare blocs that includes Sunni and
Shiite members. Moreover, it is participating in the elections in all
Arabic-speaking provinces. However, this coalition has poor chances
because of intense sectarian polarization and Allawi’s loss of a large
part of his traditional constituency, partly due to the emergence of a
new liberal list called the Civil Democratic Alliance.

Al Mada notes
Allawi stated today the US backed Nouri (gave him the post of prime
minister for a second term) because the US just wanted out of Iraq and
he notes their influence is very small in Iraq and in the Middle East --
he points to the failure of (John Kerry's) efforts with regard to
Palestine, he points to the Taliban increasing in Afghanistan as the US
prepares to leave, he points to Somalia and Sudan. National Iraqi News Agency reports:

The independent MP of the coalition of Kurdish blocs, Mahmoud Othman
confirmed " the possibility of establishing a new alliance comprises
Barzani , Allawi, al-Hakim, al-Sadr and al-Nujaifi to form the next
government ," ruling out holding a session for the House of
Representatives before the parliamentary elections ."

The Iraqi political forces competing in the elections justify the
absence of real programs by asserting that Iraq remains in transition,
so there are real differences over the basis of the political process —
such as the constitution, government formation, the decision-making
process and the relationship between the central government and the
provinces and the regions. They claim that this reality forces them to
take positions on these particular issues, rather than presenting
political programs. For example, some campaigns are sloganeering on amending the constitution, while others' slogans invoke government formation by the political majority, decentralization and the war on terror.Being in a transitional phase and disagreeing over political
fundamentals do not, however, justify lacking an economic or
development program or taking positions on such issues as housing,
health, education, human development, and human rights and freedoms. To
be fair, a few political forces such as the Supreme Islamic Council have
presented detailed programs, but the problem is then that the Iraqi
voter is faced with a choice between a detailed program and lots of
attractive slogans.

“Some candidates believe that the easiest way to convince
voters, or to silence critics, is by filling their mouths with food,”
Kathem Zayer, a primary school teacher in Basra, told NIQASH. “The same
thing happens when there are provincial elections – there’s clearly a
direct relationship between elections and banquets. Today special meals
are the best way of enhancing a candidate’s image, and of burnishing the
image of the party behind them.”

And during this round of campaigning it seems that
banquets are more popular than ever, replacing the usual distribution of
other gifts like blankets and food. Banqueting also seems to have
replaced campaign promises, for things like government jobs or better
services. That’s because nobody believes these promises anymore. But
they can still dine out.

In the province of Basra, south of Baghdad, there are more
than 750 candidates competing. Prominent parties in the area, which has
a mostly Shiite Muslim population, include the State of Law list led by
current Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who is himself a Shiite Muslim
as well as the list led by the Shiite Muslim-oriented Islamic Supreme
Council of Iraq and the Ahrar list, which is tied to the Sadrist
movement, also Shiite Muslim. Also noteworthy in Basra is the Wataniya
party, which is led by former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and which is
trying to set itself apart as being secular and non-denominational.

By rights Basra should be one of Iraq’s wealthiest cities –
it is the site of a major port and some of Iraq’s biggest oil fields
are located in the surrounding province. But somehow this wealth has not
had any effect on the lives of many ordinary people who live here – the
poverty level in Iraq sits at around 22 percent but some recent estimates suggest that it’s higher in Basra. They say that just over a third of the population in Basra live in poverty.

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About Me

I'm Michael, Mike to my friends. College student working his way through. I'm also Irish-American and The New York Times can kiss my Irish ass. And check out Trina's Kitchen on my links, that's my mother's site.